How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In our thriller the murderer wore a mask to hide his identity from the audience and the girl he murdered. This way it would create more mystery to the audience.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

When you think of a thriller film the most immediate phrase that pops up is scary. They involve a rush of emotions, excitement and a sense of suspense around an exciting plot, typically involving crime. The most common characters involved are a villain which the narrative is a them killing of innocent person brutally. The first few minutes of a thriller needs to attract the audience and wants to make them carry on watching so suspense and tension will need to be added. Credits will be involved in the opening few minutes to introduce the characters and in some cases a narrator telling the story keeping certain bits hidden. This will make the audience want to know what happens next.

These are the main conventions associated with a thriller; 

Different editing techniques would be used for different genres. For example, two types of thrillers are psychological and an action thriller. The editing in a psychological thriller would be much slower than an action thriller. This slower layout would mess with the audience’s mind thinking what is going to happen next which keeps them motivated in the film. On the other hand, an action thriller would have more upbeat music, short clips and direct close-ups of characters to show their emotion. This keeps the audience focused on what’s going to happen next. Our thriller consists of short clips and straight cuts to keep the audience on their seats and we mainly had transitions for each scene to smooth our thriller out.

Another transition that can be used effectively in a thriller is the dissolve effect. This is when one shot fades into another which can help show a move from one location to the next or from one person to the next. We used this effect in our thriller to show flashbacks as it showed time passing and was effective to use. It also made it simple for the audience watching so they knew there was a difference in time. Another effect that can be used is black and white. This is where one shot fades in or out to, or from black or white. If done quickly enough it can create a sense of flashbacks and can create a sense of time passing. We used this is our thriller at the beginning to show it was clear of the events that took place. We thought doing this would make it different from other thriller films. Also a jump cut could be added which is an abrupt cut between shots. It's effective as it’s dramatic and can begin/end action. We didn’t add this effect in our thriller as we didn’t feel we could carry it out effectively.

Mise-en-scene basically means anything in the shot. It can consist of location, costume, props and lighting. The mise-en-scene location is where the film/TV programme is set. Our location was in the middle of nowhere revolving around an abandoned, knocked down building. It had hardly any people walking around so nothing got in our way when filming. The location came very creepy as night as different noises from the building occurred which created an eerie atmosphere, just right for a thriller opening. Our thriller was set in darkness as in thrillers where darkness is added things start going wrong, and that’s how we set our plot to be.

The two sounds that can be used in a thriller film/opening are diegetic and non-diegetic. Diegetic sound is heard on and recorded from the location of the film, for example, speech. Non-diegetic sound is added when the film is edited to add to the atmosphere. For example, sound effects and music. We used a voice over in our thriller as the sound levels were too low due to the wind on the day of filming. We added the sound at the end so it fitted with the character’s movement. We also used a backing track which worked well with our opening as it was a slow, creepy eerie sound which fitted perfectly with a thriller.

Narrative can happen any time in a thriller opening, either on top of dramatic music or when the music stops to create more tension. It can be used in someone telling the story from their point of view or the audience hearing someone's thoughts and feelings. The narrative is normally being played over the mise-en-scene so it is not possible to see the actual character talking. This creates a sense of mystery to the audience.

In our thriller we had a script which was used for the detectives, we all came up with this script and tried to make it mysterious for the audience to want to know more.

When working on our thriller we researched different films to see how they have used conventions effectively. These films were useful as a source of inspiration:

‘The Happening’ used many conventions which created tension on the audience watching. For example, the background music played draws the audience’s attention to the rest of the film. It creates drama as the music starts slow and eerie then suddenly builds up with a more fast pace beat creating dramatic effect.

The way the opening has used quick transitions from each clip shows how dramatic the film will be and how fast pace the shots will link to each other. The most used transition in this opening is fade to white/black which is effective in showing previous events. A lot of short clips and straight shots were added for dramatic effect to keep the audience focused on the film. When the music became more upbeat and powerful the clips got quicker and faster showing the events and wanting the audience to see more of the film. The use of close-ups is effective in showing the characters emotions. For example, the main character is staring at something which we can’t see, but through his facial expression it reveals he’s scared or confused which makes the audience think what could happen to him. The mise-en- scene in this opening isn’t like other typical thrillers; dark and at night. This opening is in full daylight which shows how different the film is. It also concentrates on the wind, which shows that it must be the main cause of the disasters striking. The use of the title fonts/colours are important to a opening as it sets the scene for the audience in that it can show what sort of film it is. For example, if the writing is black and red, the red could connote blood or death and the black connotes mystery and tension.

The film that inspired our thriller was ‘The Strangers’ as it’s different and the characters are hidden from the viewers. For example, in ‘The Strangers’ the three main characters are hidden as they are wearing white masks and terrorise a young couple in their summer home. We thought having our main character in a mask would hide his identify to the audience and the young girl he stalks and attacks. Also, as we were filming our thriller at night, a typical thriller convention, the white mask would stand out which would create suspense and mystery of the masked man.

We used close-ups to show to show facial expressions of characters and to give a sense of mystery as you can’t see the location that they’re in. This is so the audience don’t know where they are and adds mystery and suspense when watching. Also, we used point of view shots to show the power someone has over someone else and the reaction of what they’re looking at. The speech added was used in a way to try not to give anything away. We added a quote of ‘do you think it was him’. This creates mystery on the audience as the detectives must have worked on that case before and know a lot about him and what he has done. Having a location in the middle of nowhere added mystery on the audience as it’s a completely dead area and the audience would want to know why they’re out there in the middle of the night. We tried not giving the location away too much, but as it was dark it created an eerie atmosphere to where they actually are. 

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

I think this institution would be the most suitable for our media product as it’s one of the six major movie studios is the US. This benefits us as the film will be shown in many different countries all over the world. Universal pictures would be the kind of media institution that we could use in our thriller as they have done previous films that are similar including, ‘Psycho’, ‘Skeleton Key’ and ‘Unborn’. Founded in 1912 by Carl Lamelle, it is one of the oldest American movie studios still in continuous production running for over 95 years so by working/making films from the same genre, Universal have gained a large amount of experience and now know what the audience want from these genre of films. Also, running for this long means that they must have many connections in the media industry all over the world that will be useful for our film.

As well as owning a sizable film library spanning the earliest decades of cinema to more contemporary works, it also owns a sizable collection of TV shows through its subsidiary NBC  Universal Television distribution. It also acquired rights to several prominent filmmakers' works originally released by other studios through its subsidiaries over the years. 

Universal’s production studios are based at  

‘100 Universal City Plaza Drive

’ in Universal, City, California. This means there is a lot of resources around such as a variety of places that could be used to make the film or just inspire ideas from. Distribution and other corporate offices are in New York City. Universal Pictures is the second longest lived Hollywood studio; Viacom-owned Paramount Pictures is the oldest by a month. As these areas are popular in the film world our film will become more global and the company will be known more which will mean our film can get global distribution.

The area served is Worldwide so it’s a trustable company and as the film would be shown all around the world the company will be made global and it will gain more publicity.

I think our new product wouldn't have a problem in term of promotion as Universal is a popular institution and known globally.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

We sent out a questionnaire with questions related to thriller openings and what people would expect from one. The questions range from age, gender, the importance of a thriller and preferred location for a thriller.

From our research we got some good feedback of what our target market wanted from a thriller opening. We took this feedback into consideration as it’s what our audience want and it determined the main features, conventions used, for example, flashbacks and the location used. We were going to start our opening with ’24 hours later’ but our research showed that flashbacks were more popular so we went with what our target market wanted and expected from a thriller.

When it came to rating our thriller we looked on the BBFC website to determine what was suitable to be put in our thriller. This all resulted in looking at other thrillers to see what rating they used for the different conventions they used.

We decided to rate our thriller for 15 years or over as our film was more suited for this area from all the different conventions etc used. 15 years and over classification states;

No one younger than 15 may see a '15' film in a cinema. No one younger than 15 may rent or buy a '15' rated video work.

·         Drug taking may be shown but the film as a whole must not promote or encourage drug misuse

·         Strong threat and menace are permitted unless sadistic

·         Dangerous behaviour (for example, hanging, suicide and self-harming) should not dwell on detail which could be copied.

·         Nudity may be allowed in a sexual context but without strong detail

·         There may be frequent use of strong language

·         Violence may be strong but should not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury

This would be our typical audience for our thriller. Teenagers 15+ to fit in with our classification off all genders who have an interest in different genres of films; including thrillers. They wouldn't have to come from a certain background, just people who like watching films.

Our opening didn’t really contain any of this but by giving our film this classification makes people aware of the freedom of the rest of the film. From our results it showed that most people watch 15 and over classified films whereas a large amount of people watch18’s. This classification will show that our thriller will be viewed by a variety of people ranging from 15-18.

How did you attract/address your audience?

To attract our audience we sent out a questionnaire to find out what our target market wanted from a thriller opening.

From this result we found out that our audience enjoy the tension a thriller builds so we worked on this mainly so the audience would be interested.

From this result we found out that our target market would expect a thriller to start with flashbacks. We took this on board and used flashbacks throughout our film mixing it up a bit and to make ours a bit different to other thrillers out there.

After our thriller was finished we posted our opening onto public sites such as facebook and youtube. This was a way of getting feedback for our finished product and what our chosen audience thought of it. Most of the feedback was positive. For example, a good story line, it creates mystery suspense and builds tension. Also, how creative the narratives mix and how we’ve cut them together. Some constructive criticism was to try something new with black and white screen shots at the beginning to make it different. We took this on board and added this to our thriller so it’s clear it’s different from other films.

From these comments we can see that our production meets the objectives of our target audience.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

There were a variety of different technologies that I used when planning and making my thriller opening. These were;

Blogger: blogger was used to post my research of different thriller genres and general research into our thriller. This consisted of location, props, storyboards, music, costumes etc. Also, I research different thriller openings to see what conventions were used and see ideas of how to put a thriller together. This was good organisation as when it came to planning we could just look at what we’ve researched.

Youtube/facebook: These programmes were used for our feedback on our thriller. Once we finished our thriller we posted it onto these pages and got feedback from the general public. The results showed us what our target market liked about our thriller and if we met their objectives of a thriller opening. It also gave us a chance to see what we could improve on or what things didn’t work very well. Having both good and bad feedback helped us in our evaluation.

IMovie: IMovie was used in developing/making our thriller opening. After downloading the footage onto the macs we could then start editing by adding transitions, music, sound effects etc onto our thriller making it realistic. After using the editing programme for our preliminary we got the hand of where everything was and how it worked well.

Video camera and digital camera: We used this equipment for filming our thriller opening and taking pictures of location, costumes and general pictures of our thriller for planning. After using the cameras before we knew how to use them and hoe effective they can be. From this we learnt how effective we could get shots from different camera angles and generally how effective we could make our thriller.

During shooting I’ve learnt how to use a digital camera effectively and how to create effective shots by the placement of the camera. I also learnt how to effectively use shots like zoom and pan effectively and this worked well in our film. For example, I used the zoom on an object which worked well in the finer details. It was a bit jumpy but we tried resolving this by using a tool on editing to steady the zoom. I have also learnt developing skills while editing our thriller. Through the development of our opening we all had a go at each section so we could get the hand of it. For example, we had to cut certain scenes to fit with each other and look in place. We also had to remove some dialogue in pieces or remove the film and keep the sound. This was used by removing each section and deleting the appropriate one. I also learnt about different transitions to use instead of just jump cuts to the next scene. For example, we used flash backs in our thriller so we used the dissolve effect and fade to white to create a feel of time passing making it effective. All of this editing process took part on the macs which we got the hang of quite easily. We had to import music from a different programme which we had to fit into our thriller. The music worked effectively as it created an eerie atmosphere and tension through the audience.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Looking back on my preliminary task I feel that I’ve improved much more on my thriller opening, more on editing and different shots than anything else. As our preliminary was a test run of the camera/editing equipment we went a bit over the top with our editing such as adding dramatic music for no reason and different transitions from every scene. This is problematic as it is not needed and makes the film look scratchy. Our thriller consists of as little editing as possible, mainly only using the same transitions throughout the film which we used fade to white/dissolve for the flashbacks. We also added a mystery sound effect that worked well with a thriller, but still worked effectively with the genre.

As we created a storyboard for our preliminary we thought we’d do the same for our thriller as it helped a lot in the progress of making the film. As a team we came up with a shooting script, narrative script and story boards for our final ideas of a thriller opening. This helped us in our organisation as we had a basic idea which we could add to, or change some scenes. Also for our thriller we planned the location, costumes, shots etc so we knew what we needed to include and how our thriller would plan out. We didn’t do this for our preliminary which was the reason why it wasn’t very successful in suiting the genre and idea behind it.

This planning acted as a starting point as we could change or add different ideas at any time. For example, we decided to add still images at the start and changed the colour to black and white. This was to create dramatic effect and it was different from other thriller openings.

The filming for our thriller went really well. The location was just right for a thriller and as we filmed at night it created a much tenser atmosphere with a eerie feel to it. When we got to the location and looked around we decided to change where we were going to film. We were originally going to film inside the building, but looking round outside we realised it was better facilities for a stalker. The actors we chose worked well, a young girl, showing emotion in the close ups and the masked man stalking the girl which turned out really effective in creeping out of the dark. I believe we got the characters played just right for our opening.

Some problems we had when filming was the battery life. We had to make sure we planned our time effectively and knew what we needed to do before the camera ran out from all the filming we did. We made sure it was fully charged as the start of the day and to save the battery we turned it off every shot. We did get all the clips just before it ran out, but if we had more battery we could have got some more effective shots from different camera angles. Another issue was the weather, it wasn’t a big issue but it affected our shooting. As they were high amounts of powerful wind, when the actors were speaking you couldn’t really hear them. We didn’t notice this until we got into editing but we overcame it by doing voiceovers. Apart from that everything else went well and we got a good amount of footage and effective shoots to create our opening. Our group worked well together which helped a lot and we all got the chance to add different ideas in to try out.

If I was to re-do this project I would make sure that we’d get a better variety of shots through each scene and make the editing process more effective as some bits are scratchy and we couldn’t redo any footage. As a whole I believe the whole of our group worked effectively and we all imputed our own ideas. We all had a chance with equipment such as the camera and the editing programme.

I thought our point of view shots worked effectively as it showed the audience the emotion on the character. It also shows how much power the person has and who is in control. It also adds mystery as the location is hidden so you can’t see where they are or how they got there.

From this image/shot you can tell the girl is in the middle of nowhere which adds to the tension and might give the audience questions of where is she going? The only issue I have with this scene is the lighting. We were trying to get the flashbacks to be filmed at night to add to the tension but it didn’t work. We tried darkening the picture but it different look as effective as you couldn’t see the background.

From looking back at our preliminary I feel like we have improved a lot in our skills. For example, our camera shots and how we frame them, the transitions used for our flashbacks to make them effective and the whole editing progress to create a tension thriller opening. For this production we didn’t go over the top with editing, but added more sharp scenes to create dramatic effect on the audience.

As you can see from these pictures we focused more on the detail of how the title was presented. As you can see from our thriller title we created a dramatic design with sharp colours to attract the audience. Also, the red hand represents blood so the audience will wonder where this film going. Doing this instead of a basic title gives the viewer a better involvement in the film.